


do you ever get the sense, you're watching someone else?

by inmoonlightigetseasick



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, kind of, secret identity shenanigans, who would have thought that a girl like me would double life a super star
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 20:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11562960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmoonlightigetseasick/pseuds/inmoonlightigetseasick
Summary: Michelle has a theory. It’s one of her less researched, more mystical-intuitive ones, but a theory nonetheless. It has something to do with putting together the pieces, something to do with observation.It’s junior year, but her SATs are the least of her worries. She’s the captain of the decathlon team and her star player is always skipping meetings with covers worse than whatever he uses to hide the scrapes and bruises he comes back with.





	do you ever get the sense, you're watching someone else?

Michelle has a theory. It’s one of her less researched, more mystical-intuitive ones, but a theory nonetheless. It has something to do with putting together the pieces, something to do with observation. 

It’s junior year, but her SATs are the least of her worries. She’s the captain of the decathlon team and her star player is always skipping meetings with covers worse than whatever he uses to hide the scrapes and bruises he comes back with. 

He always comes back. He seems to always face her, her lips turned slightly downward in an expression that makes something prickle in his chest with every half-assed excuse he spits out. 

“I’m really behind on Spanish, I had tutoring…”

“May really needed me to help her move some things…”

“The Stark Internship is back on…”

And every time, she rolls her eyes, and says, “I really don’t care Peter, it’s your life, do whatever you want.”

He doesn’t know why he feels indignant when she responds like this, why he wants her to care. Really, it’s easier on him that she doesn’t give him consequences or ultimatums. But he thinks that they’re friends, or that they should be. 

Sometimes she sits closer to them at the lunch table, joining in on their conversations. Sometimes they even hang out after school, which is fine. Peter is chill. 

They have a lot more in common, the three of them, than they ever anticipated. They get along like every golden trio they’ve read about in their childhoods. Though sometimes, maybe just a symptom of being new to the friend group, Michelle feels a little behind. She notices the secrets passed between just Ned and Peter, and she distances herself sometimes in response. 

Peter can’t really help it, though, he needs to confide in Ned about the Spider-Man thing. And he can’t exactly tell her, he doesn’t know how she’s going to take it and their friendship is already just this small, slow, tentative thing that he’s not ready to risk ending before it even happens.

Michelle doesn’t let on that she is curious about anything beyond what Peter tells her about himself, because that’s the first step to effective espionage. Also she’s not about to show her hand, spill the strange dancing butterflies in her stomach, that’s the first rule of poker. 

Against the instinct of said butterflies, she occasionally forces some distance. She notices that it makes the boys more reckless, anyway. 

“You were up against how many bank robbers at once?” Ned will ask in a stage whisper, cavalier because he’s used to no one listening. Their lunch table is farther from the populated ones, with only Michelle hanging at the far end of the table, nose buried in a book. 

“Ten,” Peter will respond, more terse, almost paranoid, and always glancing at her, “but it doesn’t matter, the improvements to the suit have made it easier to take on more people at a time because Karen streamlines my next attack before I even have to think about it, so overall, yeah, it’s better.” 

Only once does Michelle ever slip up, forgetting to pretend she’s not listening to this conversation. Sometimes she can’t help it, not even looking up from her book, “Wow, video games nowadays have gotten real advanced.” There is no indication in her deadpan that she actually believes they’re talking about video games. 

She glances up. Peter stares back, terrified. 

Michelle takes this as her cue to leave, but also as a sign she needs to change her MO with this investigation. She’s rushing with her head down through the hallway, practically running up the stairs to the top floor of the school. Here, she finds a secluded niche next to a bank of lockers. She opens her book back up and anticipates the day’s end. 

Peter, for his part, is frozen on the table at lunch. He half speaks to Ned, and half freaks out internally thinking— really knowing, Michelle is onto his secret. What he’s kicking himself for is that he should have just expected it. 

Of all the kid geniuses that surround him at this school, he only knows of one who has the patience to truly investigate something. No matter how many times Michelle has told him otherwise, he knows she cares. She can’t help it, and neither can he. That’s why he thinks they’d make a great pair. Of friends. Of friends, he has to remind himself. 

Ned has to ask him why his face is suddenly turning pink out of nowhere. Peter isn’t quite ready to tell him. 

He meets up with Michelle after school, waiting for her after decathlon. His heart starts beating weirdly as he sees her walk up to him in front of the main doors, absentmindedly brushing her curls out of her eyes. He has a lot building up in his head, the product of a day thinking about talking to her and planning out every scenario…

“Hey, MJ,” is all he can muster at first.

“Hi…”

“So… you still up for working on that English assignment tonight?”

“Given that this was where we agreed to meet beforehand, I would think the answer was obvious.” 

“Right, stupid, obvious, awkward…” 

She laughs, “Such accurate adjectives to describe you right now.” 

He laughs as well, feeling some of the tension dissipate, “You wanna pick up some snacks beforehand? Shakespeare always tends to make me hungry.”

“Ah yes, nothing like the bloodshed and turmoil of Hamlet to get the appetite going.” 

“It’s because “ham” is in the title, I swear!” 

“Oh my god, you’re such a loser,” she says with an achingly obvious affection in her voice. His smile is making his cheeks hurt, but he can’t help it. 

Soon, they’re at his apartment. May is watching TV and making dinner in the background every once in a while shooting Peter knowing looks, and every once in a while he shoots panicked looks back. Don’t say anything embarrassing, he tries to telegraph. He’s no Charles Xavier.

“Michelle, whatever you’re doing with that curly hair of yours recently is working wonders, isn’t it beautiful Peter?” May will ask, pretending to be innocent, even though Peter can barely just stammer out and agree because it’s not like everything about her hasn’t suddenly taken up every inch of his attention all of a sudden… 

Michelle for her part, smiles politely and thanks May. He gives her a grateful expression for not making fun of him in that moment, and she gives him a secret smile back that makes him instantly realize she’s just saving it for another time. Maybe it’s MJ and Professor X who have something in common. 

“So, to review, the final request Hamlet makes of Horatio, to tell his story, is sort of evoked as the meta-narrative of what Shakespeare is trying to do, so amid all the death there’s this aspect of immortality through storytelling that’s being sort of subconsciously promoted,” Michelle’s eyes are bright as she rambles and Peter doesn’t think he catches half of what she’s saying because he can’t stop staring at her, nodding along like an idiot. 

“If I had to be anyone in this play, I’d be Horatio, what do you think?” His brain finally registers that he was asked a question. 

“What? Oh, yeah no I’d want to be Hamlet.” 

Michelle gives him a puzzled look that’s halfway offended. 

“Let me explain! He’s just this guy right, who is living his life, then suddenly he has this… this responsibility just thrust upon him, by a ghost, just something he can’t control, and he has to do something about it and this play is just an exploration about his struggle with that…”

“Relatable?” Michelle asks, deadpan. 

He laughs nervously, “I mean if high school is any analogue,” he says weakly, his voice breaking embarrassingly. He quickly looks for a cover glancing down at the pages of notes in between them on the dining table, “So, we’re just about done?” 

“Yeah—“ she begins, before May interrupts. 

“Oh, Michelle, would you like to stay for dinner?” Michelle glances at Peter, who clears his throat nervously in response.

“Yeah, MJ you should stay, totally,” he doesn’t know if he’s quite convincing. 

“You know Mrs. Parker, thanks so much for the offer, but I think we have family coming over for dinner at my house tonight so I’m probably expected,” she looks apologetic, and her excuse seems believable enough. She slowly gathers her things and Peter shows her to the door, slightly regretful that she has to go. 

At the door, she says, “Well, we’ll have to do this again Peter, you have some interesting takes on literature.”

He smiles, “Ned and I are going to watch Rogue One again this Saturday if you wanted to come over.” 

“This is going to be the…?”

“Sixth.”

“Sixth time you’ve watched it. Okay.”

“You’ll come?”

“Seeing it’s probably the Star Wars move with the most people of colour on screen at one time, I guess I’ll see you on Saturday.” 

His smile grows wider somehow, and without thinking, he pulls her in for a hug goodbye. He feels her arm tentatively slide over his back and hug back, he suddenly feels very short of breath. They let go quickly, and Michelle does an awkward salute before disappearing down the hallway. He closes the door and turns back to see May give him an inquisitive look. 

“Don’t ask, May, I don’t even know yet.”

“Alright, alright, not asking!” 

“Thank you.”

“But she’s pretty. And smart too.” 

“I guess I have a type.” This gets a laugh out of May that’s worth the embarrassment. 

Michelle is making her way home with a fuzzy feeling in her head. Peter touching her tends to do that, and she doesn’t know how to feel about it. One thing is for certain: it’s distracting. She knows this because of the cars that yell at her as she crosses the street and the unfortunate amount of shoulders she bumps while walking. Most importantly, however, it’s distracting her from her investigation. 

Here’s Michelle’s basic suspicion: Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Here’s her plan: avoid Peter and whatever bewitching effect he has on her brain, and go directly for the man in the mask. 

She’s decided she can’t follow Peter on the off chance he’s not the masked hero and risk looking like she’s too interested in him, but no one’s going to judge her for being interested in Spider-Man. There’s no reason she can’t track him in the hopes of unmasking him, to thank him, after all he did save the decathlon team in D.C. 

So she tries her best to avoid Peter, that’s the first step of the plan. Peter doesn’t take it well. 

“What came up on Saturday that you can’t come by anymore?” He asks, for the hundredth time. He’s been like a puppy, insufferable, cute, but mostly insufferable. Also Michelle is not used to this much attention from him and it’s doing that fuzzy, distracted thing to her head again, which is not what she needs during biology. 

“If you must know. The new Naomi Klein book comes out that day. She’s doing a signing in Brooklyn and I really want to go see her.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Naomi Klein.”

“Yep.”

“Is she any good?” 

“Peter, you did not just ask me if Naomi Klein is any good. She’s going to save us all.” 

“Not if the Avengers have anything to say about it, I mean…” 

She scoffs loud enough to get a sharp glance from their teacher. She diligently looks back at her textbook and shoots Peter an evil look which only make his grin grow wider. 

“There you go, Peter, that’s my excuse. It’s better than anything you’ve ever come up with for missing decathlon.” 

“Touche.”

He doesn’t say anything else after that, although the fact that he’s glancing at her throughout the rest of class is anything but surreptitious. 

He catches up with her again after the bell rings. They walk side by side in the crowded hallway before stopping at her locker. 

“If you’re missing Saturday then can we do a make-up date?” 

Michelle tries to force her brain not to short-circuit at the word “date” with little success. 

“I mean, uh, I meant like, um,” Michelle’s consolation seems to be Peter’s brain is short circuiting too… 

He manages, “Uh, because Ned and I were going to build um, the Millennium Falcon out of Legos if you wanted to- um, I don’t know if that’s your thing, but-”

“You know, thanks for the offer, but it’s really not my thing and I—”

“Oh, okay, yeah, I figured it wouldn’t be, do you want to come with Ned and Me to the park we’re going to be testing out our—”

She feels herself snap, “Peter, can I just ask why you are so obsessed with inducting me into your freaky nerd cult with Ned?! How many times do I have to say I’m busy before you take the hint?”

He looks hurt, and Michelle immediately regrets what she said. She breathes, and blurts only seconds after, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.” He turns to leave and Michelle feels like she’s monumentally fucked this up and there’s just this urgent ringing in her ears going “Fix it!!!”

“Peter, wait!” He stops, and turns around. 

“I like you guys and I like that you ask me to hang out with you, I’m sorry.”

“We like you too, MJ. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for Ned even though I know he likes you too. I mean, I like you. I want to be friends.” 

The weight of his admission settles in Peter’s chest. Michelle looks terrified, and the silence is tense. He wants to leave, but he feels like he’s been glued to the floor and that he’ll only be set free once she says something. Anything. 

His bravery seems to inspire her. 

“I’m sorry. I’m not used to being... included,” she winces at the admission, “I know I’m not reacting properly, I’m still just more comfortable being alone sometimes.”

Peter is looking at her differently now. 

“I want to be friends,” she finishes weakly, looking stalwartly at the ground. He does the worst thing he could possibly do in this moment. He hugs her again. In the middle of the hallway. In front of everybody. Flash does a wolf whistle. Her body feels like it’s on fire. 

She hugs back, hoping that it looks in some way casual, somehow having made plans to build a lego bird or something with them the next evening. Her Peter problem remains unfixed. 

The following week, Michelle is eavesdropping on Ned and Peter again, this time in gym class. She guesses it’s not considered spying now that Peter’s declared his intentions. She still doesn’t know what to do about that. 

“So wait, why didn’t Stark let you tag along to this one?”

“He said it was too dangerous.”

“Bullshit!”

“I know, I’ve you know…” he whispers, “fought with people by myself who were half as bad and it’s like if we’re supposed to be a team… I don’t know I feel like I should be included.” 

“You’d use the armoured suit, too, right?” 

“Shh!!” Peter glances around nervously as Ned rolls his eyes. Michelle isn’t even facing them, and her headphones are conspicuous, hopefully it throws them off. She is fully listening, and she is incensed. 

Peter couldn’t be more obvious about this secret unless he tried. At this point, she should probably just confront him. But part of her just wants to make this a little harder for him, halfway out of spite because he won’t just tell her.

Forgoing distancing herself from Peter (because that’s clearly not working), she’s just going to go ahead with the second phase of the plan. She’s going to find Spider-Man. 

So that’s what she does after school, after decathlon. Following hacked-into police blotter (thank you nerds of Midtown High) and local news reports of the crimes he stops, she narrows her search field to some of the roughest areas of Queens to even some of the more touristy areas. She follows him there, and she sees him in action. Swinging from rooftop to rooftop, chasing purse-snatchers, pulling kittens down from trees, and bizarrely, giving people directions. 

She promised herself she wouldn’t be awestruck, because that would mean distraction. But as luck would have it, she’s admiring a particularly dextrous landing, a particularly distracting bulging of his bicep as he hooks his arm on a lamp-post, when she’s grabbed without so much of a yelp by two burly men and forced into a dark alley. 

It’s a real fucking cliche. 

He’s coursing through the New York City air. It’s an indescribable rush, the waves of momentum and the tides of adrenaline all coming together in a kind of mental sea-foam of pure energy. But the whole time, there’s his intuition in the back of his head that anchors him. Like now. 

It’s a dark fucking alleyway, and Michelle was never supposed to be in it. She had never been mugged before but she had been raised in this city to anticipate it. She was not unprepared. But she just never figured so many guys would be trying to mug her at once. There were six of them here. 

Peter could only see the panic in her eyes when he got close enough, perching on a fire escape a few feet above them. He doesn’t even understand the complete rage that overtakes him as he takes down the men, webbing them to the walls of the alleyway, out of the corner of his eye he sees Michelle get in a few punches and it almost knocks out his focus. 

Finally, chest heaving, he has fought off the men. He still feels this anger coursing through him, but looking at Michelle it turns into a fierce protectiveness, that actually doesn’t feel too different from anger.

“What are you doing here?” 

“Victim-blaming, Spider-Man? That’s not like you,” Michelle quips with more confidence than she actually has, her chest heaving and hands shaking as well. 

“You-you don’t know me. I don’t know you.” He seems to be reminding himself. He’s so painfully obvious, Michelle thinks. If not the months of suspicion building up to this point, his voice is a dead giveaway. Michelle decides it’s not the time. Even behind the mask she can tell he’s shaken up. As if he’s never had to rescue someone he’s known before. 

“You saved my friends in D.C.,” she reminds him quietly. 

“I save a lot of people, I guess I forgot.”

“Right, okay. Well, I’ll be on my way then.” She rolls her eyes and picks up her bag from where it had fallen. She’s already walking out of the alley when she hears him run up behind her. 

“Let me walk you home, it’s not safe.” 

“Don’t you have other people to fight?” 

“This is part of the job, trust me.” She looks at him, bewildered, but she finds she can’t come up with a quip just then.

“I trust you.”

“Okay, good.”

“Do I know you?” She asks him bluntly, she’ll give him a chance to come clean. 

He pauses for a really long time. “No.” 

“I’ll walk home myself,” she is perhaps irrationally angry. She brushes past him and quickly starts her walk back home. She knows he’s following her this time, and she’s annoyed. Mostly, she’s annoyed at how knowing he’s there is actually making her feel safer. The scowl doesn’t disappear from her face until she finally walks into her room, face-first onto her bed, and screams in frustration into her pillow. 

Peter, for his part, is deeply freaked out about the encounter. First off, he has to deal with the fact that he’d never felt as angry as he had when he saw those men go after MJ. Episodes like that make him absurdly worried about the fact that he’s inevitably going to care about people and those people are inevitably going to be targeted by people who want to hurt him and how he can’t let that happen under any circumstances.

This stuff keeps him up at night.

He also feels shitty for not telling MJ who he was. He’s sure she knows. He just doesn’t know how to even begin to broach the topic. 

The next day, despite the barely concealed fury boiling beneath her skin, Michelle actually wonders if she should take mercy on the kid. This is the infuriating effect he has on her. 

“Hi there,” she says innocently, walking up behind him at lunch. He nearly jumps out of his skin. 

“Hey!” he smiles up at her, although his grip on his tray is turning his knuckles white. 

“Is this seat taken?” she asks, pointing to the one beside him. 

“No! Not at all.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because that’s my seat, traitor,” Ned says coming up behind the both of them. His glance is withering. But Peter surprises Michelle. 

“Just sit across from us.”

“Et tu, Peter?”

Michelle grins and takes the seat beside Peter. “So how was your night last night,” she says casually, Peter nearly chokes on his broccoli. Michelle watches stoically until he catches his breath. 

“Fine, just fine, just normal,” he wheezes. 

Michelle actually pouts. 

Ned looks at the two of them. “Did something happen with you two?” he straight up just asks. 

Peter is too mortified to speak for a second. Michelle speaks instead, “No, I haven’t seen Peter since school yesterday. He had his internship, remember, that’s why he skipped practice?” 

Ned looks unconvinced, “Right…”

Michelle continues, “By the way, Peter, how’s that working now that Stark’s moved upstate?”

“Uh, I work at um small offshoot branch in the city, he still needs contacts… uh, here.” 

“Right.” 

Ned winces, as if Peter needed confirmation his excuse was not even half-assed, it was less, quarter-assed. 

“Oh! Would- would you look at the time, I have a makeup chemistry quiz,” Peter hastily makes his exit. Michelle huffs, and stabs violently at her lunch. Ned looks at her warily. 

“So how about Ms. Murray’s essay, huh,” he makes inane small-talk. 

Michelle is tired, “Truly. I believe it will kill me.” 

Ned laughs. Michelle smiles. This is a positive experience, she thinks. 

“So what do you know about Spider-Man?” And just like that Michelle’s ruined it. 

It’s after school, and Ned and Peter have successfully avoided her like the plague. But they can’t escape her at decathlon. However, as soon as she catches sight of their wary expressions as they approach her, her anger sort of leaves her in a huff. She had missed their annoying presences today when they’d kept their distance. 

“Hey, Peter, Ned!” 

They approach her tentatively. 

“I’ve got a new idea for the format of our training regimen. Come, be my guinea pigs.” 

The boys give each other a look, then both flash her grateful smiles and take the cards she offers them. It’s an otherwise uneventful meeting, although Peter does stare at her more. She’s going to chalk that up to her having genuinely become his biggest fear. She sighs. 

After school the three of them part ways. Michelle doesn’t have to be home for a few more hours, so she figures now’s a time as any to devote to her investigation. Peter seemed like he was in a rush to get away, probably to get into his costume and swing around or whatever. 

Michelle makes a beeline for a neighbourhood he’s known to frequent. She finds an empty bench by a patch of grass. She settles down with her book, it’s only a matter of time. 

“You again,” the voice behind the mask says. 

Michelle turns around, looking up from her book. 

“Look who’s stalking now.” 

“What? I’m not stalking you! You’re here again!”

“I'm from this city, last time I checked.” 

“You don’t live anywhere near here, I know that, I walked you home!”

“Uh, you mean you followed me home. I’m surprised you even remember that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You didn’t remember D.C.”

“That’s different—”

“Besides, I’d imagine you walk a lot of people home. People who actually want you to.” 

He laughs suddenly, “Why would you think that?” 

“Well, you’re the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ don’t all the damsels you save just fall helplessly into your arms so that you can deliver them home?”

“First of all, there are no other damsels—“

“Hey, first of all I was being facetious about the damsel thing, obviously.”

“Obviously.” 

“Women can take care of themselves.”

“I know! Believe me, I know!”

“Do you remember me because I argue with you?” 

“No, a lot of people argue with me, surprisingly.” 

“So I’m not special.” 

“No! You’re special. You’re… definitely special.”

There’s a terrible grin that Michelle feels coming on but can’t help but give in to. She can’t even see his face, but her cheeks actually warm up and she suddenly wishes she had a mask, too. 

So, they do this dance now. She stalks Spider-Man— rather, she runs in to Spider-Man every so often. She’s not getting mugged all the time, it’s more like she’s just hanging out wherever he is and if he’s not directly in the middle of stopping some small crime, he’ll actually just hang out and talk. For Peter, that’s all it is, an excuse to hang out with MJ, since, in a slightly infuriating twist, she seems to prefer spending time with him behind the mask than just in person. 

“Okay but there’s no way Black Panther doesn’t kick the Winter Soldier’s ass, or anyone’s ass, or your ass for that matter.” 

“You’re right, he nearly did kick my ass.” 

“Consider that an honor.” 

“Do you think you could kick my ass?” He had asked her.

She had seemed surprised, “Oh, undoubtedly." 

He feels strangely brave, “I feel like you’re one of those people that could kill with a single look though.”

She giggles. Peter thinks he’s having an out of body experience. Michelle Jones has giggled in front of him. She doesn’t even seem embarrassed about it. 

“Thanks, I’m still working on though. So far, I’ve got looks that make people sweat, looks that make people piss their pants, still working on straight up death though.”

“You’ll get there. You know, you seem pretty strong in general,” it’s like he can’t stop but he really wishes he could stop, “I mean correct me if I saw wrong but you landed some good punches on one of those guys who was trying to mug you.” 

The smile seems to slip off her face at the memory, “Self defence classes since I was twelve,” she explains rather grimly. 

“Should we actually fight now though?”

This surprises a laugh out of her, and it makes him feel warm and proud that he did that. He laughs a lot when he’s with her, even if it is just behind the mask. One of the perks is Karen records the interactions. Sometimes, and he’ll never admit this to anyone, he just plays them back and watches, dazed at her and at himself for saying half the witty things he wish he could say without the mask’s “help.”

It’s not that they don’t hang out, MJ and Peter that is. They have movie nights, and lego nights, those are mostly with Ned. Sometimes, they’ll study together, just the two of them, but that’s not really hanging out. They mostly end up at Peter’s and MJ gets extremely acquainted with his room, she almost becomes a fixture there, and that makes Peter very nervous. 

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they plan to go to her house. Originally, they agree that Peter and Ned will walk home with her after decathlon practice to pick up some books for their next history project (it’s on the Black Panthers, the activist group not the superhero), and afterwards they would just hang back and watch a movie. 

This was until Ned got a date and abandoned the two of them. 

“This is actual betrayal, Ned,” Peter pouts, they’re in his room the night before, Ned is laying on the top bunk, Peter is trying to bore a hole through the back of the mattress as he stares up at it. Unfortunately, the spider bite didn’t give him laser vision. 

“Dude, it’s almost the end of junior year, this stuff is going to happen now.”

“Not to us!”

“We’re coming out of our shells, just like May said!” 

“I didn’t know that was actually a thing.” 

“You have to like somebody, you’re not still hung up on Liz, are you?” 

“No! No, but I don’t like anyone right now.”

“Sure, okay, you can tell me the truth when you’re ready.” 

“Ned.”

“I just don’t want to find out about it like I found out about Spider-Man, that’s my only request, is I don’t find out about it by walking in on you two, like, I would like for once to hear news from you fully clothed.”

“Ned!” 

“I’m just saying.” 

There’s a pause. 

“She definitely doesn’t like me back.”

“Just to clarify, we’re talking about Michelle?”

“Yes,” he says defeated, “we’re talking about MJ, she said she prefers to be called MJ.”

“When did this even happen?” 

“We’ve just been hanging out a lot, I don’t know, one day I suddenly just felt different, I just felt something, I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean you’ve been hanging out a lot? You barely see me let alone her, you’re in the Spider suit all the time.”

“That’s the thing.”

“What?”

“I hang out with her… in the suit…as Spider-Man…”

“WHAT?” 

“God, shh, you’re going to wake up May!”

“Sorry, but what? She knows you’re Spider-Man?”

“That’s the other thing.”

“You’re telling me—“

“MJ doesn’t know I’m Spider-Man. Or, I’ve never told her, or unmasked myself. I think she knows though, I think she put together the pieces a long time ago.”

“So why wouldn’t she tell you if she knows?” 

“I don’t… know…” 

“You had better find out tomorrow.” 

He groans. “I don’t want to think about tomorrow.” 

“I’m going to sleep. Your life exhausts me Peter, you know that?” 

“You wanted to be the guy in the chair,” Peter mutters, but Ned answers with a pointed snore. Fitfully, Peter drifts off to sleep too. 

The next day, his mind is barely on school, he can’t stop staring at her at decathlon practice. He acts normal, he thinks, but he feels like he’s having an out of body experience right up until they get to MJ’s house. She doesn’t act like she’s suspected anything. 

“So this is my room.”

He takes in the walls plastered with images of Malcolm X, Frida Kahlo, and even Ava DuVernay. If there was any doubt MJ was cooler than him, it no longer exists. He smiles at the shelves that line every wall, sagging and overloaded with books, the fuzzy rug on the floor and even more books towering on the nightstand table.

“Do you, by any chance, like to read?” 

“You know I’ve never tried it before, but I’ve heard good things.”

They laugh nervously. Strange, why should either of them be nervous? 

Michelle settles down on the fuzzy rug. She pats the space in front of her. Peter takes a seat. Michelle reaches behind her for a set of books. 

“You definitely want this one by Assata Shakur. She was, obviously, Tupac’s mom and she had a really fascinating relationship with the movement…” Her eyes lit up, like they always did when she launched into her long explanations of books. Peter doesn’t ever feel like he could get tired of this. That’s kind of a scary thought. 

“Yeah, Ned mentioned we needed to look her up, thanks,” he smiles. 

“So, Ned’s on a date, huh?”

A jolt of nervousness suddenly courses through him, “Yeah, uh, he’s um liked Betty for a while and she liked him too and she asked him out at lunch, um, it was really nice, you should have been there to see it…” 

“I was busy.” 

“Right.” 

“Everything’s so different this year.” 

“Yeah. Different.”

Eloquent, Peter. Real eloquent. 

“That’s pretty cool that Betty made the first move.” 

“Yeah, definitely, very 21st century.” 

She laughs a little mirthlessly, she furrows her brow, suddenly serious, “I’m thinking of asking someone out.” 

He feels stricken with terror. Terror? That it won’t be him she’s talking about? That it will be him? It’s like a blend of terror and excitement in that scenario. He realizes he hasn’t spoken. 

“What do you think?” she prompts.

“I think that’s a great idea, he’s a lucky guy, or girl, or just, person. Lucky person.” 

“Peter I didn’t think it was possible but have you somehow gotten whiter? Like, you look very pale…” 

He laughs nervously, then blurts out the worst possible thing, “It’s, um, a nervous reaction I think. My blood is rushing to all the fight or flight responses.”

“Which one are you going to choose?”

“I’ll fight it.” 

She smiles, “That’s just like you.”

“You changed the subject, you know.” 

“Right. I did.”

“You want to ask someone out?”

“I want to ask someone out. But I don’t know if I should.”

“Why not?” 

“Like a thousand different reasons. I don’t know if he’d say yes. I don’t know if he even likes me. I’m not the most likeable.”

“I think you should still try. I think he’d be an idiot if he thought you weren’t likeable.”

“You know, I also don’t know if, say, we dated, he’d be completely honest with me. See, I like him, but I don’t really actually know him. I think he’s hiding something and he won’t tell me.” 

“Maybe he has a good reason for it.”

“What would constitute a good reason?” 

“Is he a superhero?” 

“I don’t really want to play 20 questions anymore.” 

She leans in almost imperceptibly and he swears he almost feels his heart stop. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. They both jump and quickly lean away from each other, cheeks burning. 

“Michelle?” a woman’s voice calls.

“Yes, mom?” Michelle calls back. 

The door opens a crack, Mrs. Jones peeks her head in, smiling. “I just wanted to pop in to let you know if you wanted any snacks I laid out some veggie sticks and hummus in the kitchen so you can help yourselves.”

“Thanks, mom,” Michelle says, somewhat strained. 

Mrs. Jones notices the book in Peter’s hands, though not necessarily the nervous, vise-like grip he has on it. “Assata Shakur, that’s a good one!” She nods approvingly before she leaves, pointedly keeping the door open. 

“Uh, MJ, I think I’m probably going to go. Thank you for the book. But I will see you… at school…” 

Michelle huffs but doesn’t say anything as Peter makes his rather graceless exit. Later with a tray of vegetables and hummus in her bed and her notes laid around her, Michelle considers giving up. 

Then that night, she sees Spider-Man again, this time truly unexpectedly. No one’s in danger. She’s not conveniently in his warpath. She’s still in her bedroom. He’s outside her window, perched on the sloping roof outside. 

She pulls the window open. 

“Hello there.” 

“Hi.”

“I was, uh, in the neighbourhood.”

“Uh huh.”

“I think there was a report of some suspicious activity nearby, so I just wanted to make sure you were, you know, not in harm’s way.”

“I think I’m as far out of harm’s way as I can be given that I’m just in my bed with some hummus.” 

Though she can’t tell because of the mask, she thinks he might be looking past her to her bed where her notes from her investigation are very clearly laid out. 

Distract him, she thinks. 

Her hare-brained solution is something that she will blame entirely on teenage frustration, because it possesses her. She’ll blame it on being interrupted earlier. Her hands reach out, of their own volition, and roll his mask up. His hands come up to her wrists to stop her. She stops just below his nose. 

“Don’t worry,” she tries to assure him. “I just want to thank you for checking up on me.” 

She hopes he catches her meaning as she leans as far outside her window as she can without falling out, he seems to take the hint and leans closer to her. She holds the side of his face and kisses him, and he automatically kisses her back. His mouth is warm and insistent and his lips are soft. Somehow, that feels like explosions and molten lava in her chest. She actually wonders if this is really Peter for a second. 

For his part, he doesn’t even know who he is anymore either, because he’s completely electrified, reaching up and running his hands through her curly hair and pulling her closer and —

Then she yelps, he’s pulled her too far and she’s half falling out of her window. Luckily for his reflexes he catches her and stabilizes her and prevents the both of them from rolling down and off of her roof. He helps her back through her window, not looking at her, completely mortified. 

He tugs his mask down, hurriedly, stammering, “You’re- you’re welcome.” Michelle watches him scramble down from her roof and start running away, for lack of anything to swing on. She rests her fingers on her lips, still tingling from what she’s just done, the consequences of which are about to hit her like a tidal wave.

The next day, the tension between them is palpable. Ned is at a loss. She’s back to sitting at the far end of the table. Peter seems to be in a trance, only staring straight ahead of him. 

“So my date went really well,” he seems to say as if on mute. 

“That’s- that’s really great Ned, I’m happy for you,” Peter says to his mashed potatoes. 

Ned whispers to Peter, “Did something happen with you and Michelle last night?”

“Me and Peter?” Michelle pipes up suddenly, “Well, no, see Peter left the building right after picking up the books for your project.” 

Peter looks down as if his potatoes contain the cure for cancer. 

“Ugh,” is all Michelle says before picking up her book and leaving the cafeteria. 

“Peter—”

“I kissed MJ,” he blurts, taking a deep breath he hadn’t known he was holding. 

“You did what?!” 

“We kissed, last night.”

“What, then why aren’t you talking to each other? Why is she mad?”

Peter looks up at Ned guiltily. 

“Don’t tell me,” Ned says as he realizes. He lowers his voice, “She kissed Spider-Man?”

“Yeah with just the lower half of the mask raised,” he mimics the motion of lifting his mask at his mouth. 

“And you still haven’t told her.”

“Nope.”

“And she still hasn’t asked you?”

“No.”

“So she’s basically just messing with you at this point.” 

“It’s not that.” 

“Will you just go talk to her, please? Before I have an aneurysm?”

“I can’t talk to her she’s clearly mad at me!”

“Well yeah because you kissed her while you were Spider-Man like some kind of—”

“She kissed me!” 

There’s a pause. “So like I said, she’s messing with you.” 

“I just can’t help but feel like she likes Spider-Man and not me.”

“How the fuck could that be possible, you’re the same person.” 

“I don’t know if we are.” 

“Go find her, go talk to her, for the love of God, I beg you.” 

Peter braces himself against the table and gets up. He walks through the double doors and Ned sighs. 

On the other side of the doors, Peter is panicked. He looks to either side of the deserted hallway, then down at his phone and the slew of unanswered texts. Then, out of desperation, in a moment that probably should have been more grounded in Peter’s own capabilities he resorts to trying to sense where she’s gone. That quickly doesn’t work.

“You were bitten by a radioactive spider, you’re not a psychic, that wouldn’t be believable,” he mutters to himself.

“Yeah you can only suspend people’s disbelief so much…”

He turns around and MJ is behind him. He braces himself. 

“We should talk about last night,” she says calmly. 

“So… we’re acknowledging last night happened…”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a sine qua non for this conversation.” 

He’s going to pretend his Latin is good enough that he caught that phrase, “right, sure, so we’re acknowledging the other, um, bigger sine qua non?” 

“I’m not sure that’s how you use the term but if we’re talking about,” she quickly looks around, then pulls Peter by the arm so that they’re walking out of the school building, “if we’re talking about your secret double life, then yeah, we’re gonna have to acknowledge that one too.”

They finally stop a little ways beyond school property, and they sit on a bench. 

She looks out at the street, avoiding his gaze, “I’m sorry I kissed you.”

This takes him by surprise, “Don’t be sorry. It-it was nice.” 

“It was nice. But I guess I meant I’m sorry I kissed you in the way I did.” 

“You were really good at it, I don’t know what you mean—”

“Look, what I’m trying to say is I have no interest in kissing Spider-Man.” 

“Your actions last night would prove the opposite.” 

“I know, I just got caught up in the tension, and I was going to kiss you before my mom walked in and you ran away…”

“You did still kiss me.”

“Look, what I’m trying to say is I can’t deal with the double life, secret identity bullshit.”

“I can’t tell anyone, MJ, for their own safety—”

“But you didn’t even tell me.”

“You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“I gave you so many chances to come clean and tell me and you didn’t.”

“I wanted to, but I—”

“You never wanted to.”

“I did! I just got… caught up,” he mirrors her words, “in being this dashing, confident superhero behind the mask who you clearly seemed to like better—”

“You’re such an idiot!”

“Look, you wanted to know and now you know, and now I’ve come clean, are you happy?” 

“I’m not happy,” her voice quavers, “I don’t think we should date each other.” 

Just like that, his heart plummets. “MJ, wait.” But she doesn’t wait, she gets up and leaves him sitting on the bench. He doesn’t go back for his afternoon classes, let alone decathlon, instead slinking back home with red-rimmed eyes hoping that May doesn’t see him until he’s in his room. 

Talk about some bullshit. 

Days later, Peter is supremely frustrated. He’s played their argument over in his head a thousand times and it only makes him more frustrated. There was an actual point to separating his civilian life from his superhero life and the point was to not let the people he cared about get hurt, or get victimized, or be used against him. The more people he tells, the more people that find out, the more susceptible they become to that goddamn bullshit.

Bullshit for example like the fact that MJ has not spoken to him, even at decathlon meetings, let alone answered any of his texts or emails or messages. He can’t even get a message across using Ned as a proxy. 

Even more bullshit is that he still has to be Spider-Man with a broken heart. For example now, he’s being chased through the city by some guy who punches with the force of a glowing purple alien crystal in his fist. 

This man puts his fist to good use, too, punching Peter hard as he swings by. He goes careening into the side of a building, the brick crumbling around him, the dust rising, but the pain barely registering for the adrenaline. He gets back up. 

They’re dangerously close to Midtown High, where in the back of his mind Peter is feeling guilty because he’s missing out on decathlon practice again. He’s just had a hard time facing MJ since the silent treatment began. He’ll have a hard time facing anyone, however, if he doesn’t dodge this next punch. 

He manages it, but it hits the building behind him with enough force that he thinks he can see the structural damage being caused. Their fight is inching them closer, still to the school. This is not good, he thinks. He doesn’t have any real ideas on how to divert them. 

He dodges and keeps dodging because thats all he can do. He shoots a web at the weapon on the man’s fist but it seems to be supercharged, it rips through his webs. This is supremely worrying. 

What’s even more worrying is that the alien stone in the man’s weapon is doing that shining thing. That thing that Ned’s did before it blew up. 

They’re in a school-zone for fuck’s sake. 

“Listen! Hey! Stop!” He’s trying to yell some sense into the guy, because, hey, that’s never worked before and why should it work now?

“Get over here and fight me, you twerp!” 

“Will you just listen to me! That thing in your weapon is going to explode!” He swings past, dangerously close again. 

“Yeah it’s going to explode your skull, get down here!” 

“No, listen to me, it’s not safe to use those things, they are sensitive to radiation they—!”

A couple of yards away, the front doors to Midtown High open. His panic rises. 

“Your arm is going to explode!” He yells, dodging another punch, and finally getting a good kick in. It sends him careening towards the school which is the opposite of what he wanted. 

“Crap crap crap crap crap,” he mutters, sprinting across to the guy. His weapon with the alien crystal is still on his arm, and no matter what he does, he can’t get it off. He looks back at the school, the team is still slowly exiting, he knows this explosion can’t get anywhere near the building, some of them are probably still inside, he still hasn’t seen Ned come out. Or MJ. 

He starts tugging at the arm thing with more urgency. The guy is completely knocked out. Thinking quickly, Peter tugs him slowly farther and farther away from the school, but this action wakes him up. 

There are cracks starting to form in the crystal now. Karen warns him he has seconds before it is to erupt. They’re still too close. 

Suddenly, he hears, “Get out of there!” from behind him, near the school. It’s Ned. And MJ is beside him. Some other kids are coming out of the school. He frantically motions to them, “You guys get out!” 

Karen gives him a final warning, so he runs towards the school, in his way picking up garbage can lids, anything that might be adequate shelter. He throws the makeshift shields at the kids, frozen there, one by one. 

The last shield, one of those big blue recycling bins, leaves his hands just as the shock from the explosion sends him careening forwards. 

He crumples into the side of a building. He hears screaming amid he ringing in his ears. Everything is swathed in purple light. 

He gets brief glimpses. Ned. MJ. 

He’s trying to apologize but he can’t hear if he’s actually doing it. He tries to tug off the mask but someone holds his hands in place. 

When he wakes up, it’s hours later, he’s in his room. Ned is by his side in an instant. 

“May! He’s awake!”

“How long was I out?” 

“Just a couple of hours.”

“Was anyone hurt?” 

“You got the worst of it, I’m afraid.”

“Peter!” May shouts, rushing in to his room. She wipes at the tear tracks drying on her cheeks. She quickly crowds him into a crushing hug. He winces, and she immediately lightens up. 

“I’m alright, May, I’m going to be alright.” 

“I can’t even lecture you right now, okay, save the defence for later, I’m just glad you’re alive.” 

“I love you, May.”

“I love you, Peter.” 

“For what it’s worth, I love you too, Peter,” Ned adds, smiling. 

“I love you too, man.” 

Later, he is freed from May’s hug, with her sitting on the far end of his bed, Ned in his desk chair beside them. They each have a cup of cocoa in their hands, and Peter reflects almost sadly. 

“I love you guys so much it makes me stupid.”

Neither of them can say anything to that. 

Days after, when the buzz about the incident has died down, all the kids are cleared of their (thankfully minor) injuries and sent home from the hospital. Peter feels okay about roaming around as Spider-Man. He had endangered his friends, and the guilt had kept his mask buried deep in his sock drawer. 

He hadn’t spoken to MJ since, and he didn’t know how he was going to speak to her now. Because of course she is there, staring up at him from where he’s perched on a rooftop near the scene of the explosion. He's nervous being here with her even though the dust has settled, the process of rebuilding has begun. She stares up at him expectantly. He clambers down to meet her. 

“Can I hang out with you up there?” This is the first thing she says to him after days. 

“Depends, do you still hate me?” 

“I never hated you.” 

“Then why don’t you respond to my texts?”

“I responded to this one, didn’t I?”

He holds his arms out, wordlessly as a response. Awkwardly, she steps into a hug. He tightens his arms around her and whispers, “Is this okay?” She nods. Her grip tightens in response and her eyes screw shut as he launches a web and propels them both to the rooftop. 

Peter knows this was not the time for the thrill in his chest that he can’t help but feel from her touch, he feels it anyway. They sit side by side looking over the wreckage. The streets are still and blackened. Wisps of police tape and construction crew blockades add unexpected yellows and oranges amid the grey rubble. School is out, the building stands eerily in the distance. 

Michelle suddenly reaches out to point to a twisted pile of metal curled around one of the buildings' sides. 

“That was my favourite hot dog cart,” she says quietly, trying to lighten the mood. "So, thanks for that." 

“I didn’t want you to be a part of any of this,” finally, he takes off his mask in front of her. She doesn’t even look at him. 

“Then why did we become friends?” 

“That’s different, I, Peter Parker, wanted to be friends.” 

“Right but you, Peter Parker, are Spider-Man. So… if I do the basic algebra…”

“It’s different.”

“Why do you think there’s such a clear distinction between these two parts of yourself?”

“I need there to be one unless I want to go insane.” 

“But isn’t it going to be easier for you mentally not to have to lie to everyone you care about?” 

He sighs, “I guess.” 

“You know the only reason I waited for you to tell me you were Spider-Man was because I thought you’d only tell me when you knew you could trust me.”

“I thought you waited so long out of spite.” 

She laughs, “yeah I kind of wanted to stress you out. Does she know? Doesn’t she?”

“You know you don’t play dumb very well.” 

“There goes my acting career.” 

“When did you know?” 

“I suspected after D.C. Then when I confronted you after almost being mugged…”

“What tipped you off, though, the voice?”

“Dead giveaway.” 

“That was ages ago.” 

“I kept it up for as long as I could.” 

“I think you were right to give up on me.” 

“Who said I gave up on you?” 

“Well you said…”

“No matter what I said, we’re always going to be friends.”

“Really?” 

“I just decided that, yes.” 

“I should have told you. If you’re going to be in my life, you should be in the loop.”

“I’m glad you finally feel that way.” 

“I’m glad we’re talking again.” 

She smiles at him in a way that makes his heart stutter. He’s going to have to keep that in check. They sit in comfortable silence. 

Then MJ speaks, starting innocently enough, “you know I do understand the danger of you just telling all your friends though. I mean if you tell me are you going to have to tell the rest of the decathlon people. They’re your friends too.” 

Peter buries his face in his hands. She was going to make him say it. 

“You’re a different kind of friend, MJ,” he says, not looking at her. She takes the opportunity to inch closer until their shoulder are pressed together.

“Oh so I guess I’ll be more like Ned then, the support staff. I get it.” 

“MJ, you’re killing me here.” 

She laughs, silent still. "I'd ask you out but I still don't know if you like me."

“Here, I’d thought that kiss would have been answer enough.” 

“You didn’t kiss me, I kissed you.”

“But my response to kiss, surely.” 

“Hm, I can’t quite remember it.” 

Peter laughs, almost frustrated. He looks out onto the sunset turning New York vivid orange beneath them. The moment feels heavy, and meaningful. “Do you still mean what you said on the bench, that you’re not happy, with me?”

“Peter, look at me for a second.” 

He complies automatically. She is staring back at him, her brown eyes are reflecting the dappled light of the setting sun. 

“I am happy. I’m happier than I have any right to be, with you. I’m happy you’re alive. I’m honestly so stupidly happy it has to be clouding my judgement to want to be with a self-sacrificing idiot like you.”

He’s silent, awestruck, his heart nearly bursting. 

“Don’t freak out, we’re like ten stories high right now,” she warns before she kisses him. 

On paper, it’s a good, solid (though too brief and a little clumsy) press of the lips. What it feels like is a thousand firecrackers going off in his chest, it feels like pure electricity jolting through his limbs and making his fingers numb. She breaks the kiss and pulls away and looks at him. Her head is fuzzy again, and every inch of her is so pleasantly warm. 

She remembers how to speak, but just barely, “so…”

“I’m not freaking out,” he manages, his voice suddenly hoarse. 

“Okay, good,” she smiles at him in a way that he knows that smile is meant only for him. 

It give him a dose of courage, and his hand comes up to cup her cheek and pull her back in so he can kiss her again, and again, and many more times after that, who’s counting.

**Author's Note:**

> yikes @ myself for writing this  
> i just love these kids  
> title from "Gwan" by Rostam


End file.
